Part 30

The end of his journey found him in the little town of Harmony, which was afterwards changed to Richfield, and is now within the city limits of Minneapolis.

Here he was able to buy for $100 a claim of two hundred and sixty acres, with a house upon it, which was only partly finished, being, however entirely enclosed. This particular claim attracted his attention on account of the house, as his family was so soon to follow. It began at what is now Fiftieth street and Lyndale Avenue and continued out Lyndale three quarters of a mile. The house (with some addition) is still standing on Lyndale Avenue between Fifty Third and Fifty Fourth streets. Minnehaha creek ran through the farm and the land on the north side of the creek (part of which is now in Washburn Park) was fine wooded land.

When the first boat came up the river in the spring it brought my mother and us boys. My father had sent us word to come up to Fort Snelling on the boat, but we had not received the message and so got off at St. Paul and came up to St. Anthony by stage and got a team to take us to our new home. We found it empty, as my father and an uncle who was also here, had gone to the fort to meet us. As we went into one of the back rooms, a very strange sight met our eyes. My father and uncle had set a fish trap in the creek the night before and had poured the results of their catch in a heap on the floor and there was such a quantity of fish that it looked like a small haycock. This was done for a surprise for us, and as such, was a great success, as we were only accustomed to the very small fish that lived in the creek that ran through our home town in Maine, and these long pickerel and large suckers were certainly a novelty.

We salted them down and packed them in barrels and for a long time had plenty of fish to eat, to sell and to give away.

Our house soon took on the character of a public building, as my father was made Postmaster, Town Treasurer and Justice of the Peace, and all the town meetings were held there, as well as church and Sunday school. My father gave five acres down at the creek to a company who erected a grist mill and the settlers from fifty or sixty miles away would come to have grain ground and would all stop at our house to board and sleep while there. Then the house would be so full that we boys would have to sleep on the floor, or out in the barn or anywhere else we could find a place.

During our first winter, a party of about fifty Sioux Indians came and camped in our woods just west of where the Washburn Park water tower now stands. They put up about twenty tepees, made partly of skins and partly of canvas. We boys would often go in the evening to visit them and watch them make moccasins, which we would buy of them. They would often come to our house to beg for food, but in all the time they remained there (nearly the whole winter) they committed no depredations, except that they cut down a great deal of our fine timber, and killed a great quantity of game, so that when they wanted to come back the next winter, father would not allow it.

Once after they had gone away, they came back through the farm and went off somewhere north of us, where they had a battle with the Chippewas. When they returned, they brought two scalps and held a "pow-wow" on the side of our hill.

We had a great deal of small game in our woods, and great quantities of fish in the creek. We used to spear the fish and sometimes would get two upon our spears at once.

My mother was very fond of dandelion greens, and missed them very much, as she could find none growing about our place. So she sent back to Maine for seed and planted them. But I hardly think that the great quantities we have now are the result of that one importation.

After a few years we had a school at Wood Lake, which is down Lyndale avenue two or three miles.

Mrs. Mary Pribble--1854.

My father, Hiram Smith arrived in Minnesota Apr. 21, 1854 settling first in Brooklyn, Hennepin County. My mother followed in July of the same year, with the family of three children, myself, aged seven, and two brothers aged two and five years. We arrived in St. Paul July ninth and my mother, with her usual forethought and thrift, (realizing that before long navigation would close for the winter and shut off all source of supplies) laid in a supply of provisions while we were in St. Paul. Among other things she bought a bag of rice flour which was all the flour in our colony until April of the next year.

We came by stage to Anoka and were to cross the Mississippi river in a canoe, to the trading post of Mr. Miles, which was on a high point of land in what is now Champlin. It was where Elm creek empties into the Mississippi. But the canoe was too small to carry us all at once and so I was left on the east shore sitting upon our baggage, to wait for a return trip. When I finally arrived across the river, there were Indians gathered at the landing and they touched me on the cheek and called me "heap pale face."

There was great joy in our little colony when that same autumn my father discovered a fine cranberry marsh. Much picnicking and picking followed. My parents secured seven bushel and alloted very much on the winter supplies that these cranberries would buy when they could send them to St. Paul, our only market.

Soon one of the neighbors prepared to set out on a trip by ox-team to St. Paul. The only road at that time was by the Indian trail, which for several miles was where the county road now leads from Robbinsdale to Champlin. Then to the ferry at St. Anthony Falls, and so on down the east side of the river to St. Paul.

My mother had made out a careful list of the real necessities to be purchased, putting them in the order of the need for them, in case he would not be able to buy them all.

She knew very well that there would be no possible way to purchase any new clothing all winter and so the first items on the list were: new cloth for patches and thread to sew them with. This latter came in "hanks" then, instead of on spools.

After that came the list of provisions, as seven bushels of cranberries were expected to buy a great many supplies. How well I remember the joy upon my mother's face, when those precious cranberries were loaded on the neighbor's already full wagon and the oxen slowly disappeared down the old trail! It was a long tedious journey to be made in that way, and they had many days to wait before they would receive the fruits of that wonderful wagon load.

Finally the neighbor was back, and came to my mother and said: "Thee will be disappointed when I tell thee that the last boat left for St. Louis the day before I arrived in St. Paul. There is not a yard of cloth or a hank of thread in the town, and I could only get thee three brooms for thy fine cranberries."

The next spring my father made maple sugar and was able to buy a cow and six hens from a man who came overland from southern Illinois, driving several cows and bringing a box of hens, and so we began to live more comfortably.

In 1856 many people came, and by that time we had school, church and Sunday school and a lyceum, the pleasures of which I can never forget. We also had a portable sawmill.

I think it was in the winter of 1855 that an agent, a real live agent, appeared in our midst to tell us of the remarkable qualities of a new oil called kerosene. He said if he could be sure of the sale of a barrel, it would be brought to St. Paul and delivered to any address on or before Aug. 15. I have the lamp now, in which part of that first barrel was burned.

Mrs. Edmund Kimball--1855.

My father, Freeman James, left his home in New York state and came to Hasson, Minn., in 1854. The next year he decided to go after his family and so wrote my mother to be ready to start in August. My mother got everything in readiness to start, but for some reason my father was delayed in getting back home, and my mother, thinking that she had misunderstood his plans in some way, decided to start anyway, and so she loaded our belongings on the wagon and we started alone. I was only eleven years old, and well I remember how great an undertaking it seemed to me to leave our pleasant home and all my playmates and start without father on such a long trip. But when we arrived at Dunkirk, where we took boat to cross Lake Erie, we found father, and so made our journey without mishap. We arrived by boat in St. Paul in August '55 and started at once for Hasson, stopping that first night at the home of Mr. Longfellow, at a place called Long Prairie. We were most cordially received and found other settlers stopping there for the night too, which made the house so crowded that they were obliged to make beds on the sitting room floor for all the children. After we were put in bed, still another traveler arrived, a man who was expecting his family and had come part way to meet them. Just for fun the family told him that his family had arrived and pointed to us children on the floor. He was overjoyed, and came and turned the covers down to see us. Only for a moment was he fooled but shook his head and said we were none of his.

I shall never forget the shock I felt at the first view I had of our new home. It was so different from what we had left behind, that to a child of my age, it seemed that it was more than I could possibly endure. It was growing dark and the little log cabin stood in the deep woods, and the grass was so long in the front yard, it seemed the most lonely place in the world. And dark as it was, and as long as I knew the way back to be, I was strongly tempted and half inclined to start right off to my dear old home. This was all going through my mind while I stopped outside to look around after the rest had gone in. When they had lighted one or two candles and I followed them in, the homesick feeling was increased by the new prospect. My father had evidently left in a great hurry for every dish in the house was piled dirty upon the table, and they were all heavy yellow ware, the like of which I had never seen before. The house had been closed so long that it was full of mice, and they ran scurrying over everything.

But there was much work to do before we could get the place in order to go to bed, and it fell to my lot to wash all those dishes, no small task for an eleven year old girl.

In the morning, when the house was in order and the sun was shining in, and we could see what father had done to make us comfortable, the place took on a very different aspect and soon became another dear home.

He had made every piece of the furniture himself. The bed was made of poles, with strips of bark in place of bedcords, the mattress was of husks and the pillows of cat-tail down. There were three straight chairs and a rocking chair with splint bottoms. The splints were made by peeling small ash poles and then pounding them for some time with some heavy instrument, when the wood would come off in thin layers. The floor was of split logs. Father had made some good cupboards for the kitchen things.